my first blogs

September 16, 2007

Thoughtful article by Elinor Mills at CNET, who arrived at last week's Conversational Marketing Summit knowing that she's a skeptic. She challenges the few nuggets of wisdom that have been proferred on conversational marketing, and concludes:Just as advertisers have been able to get their ads printed on stickers
on supermarket fruit, tattooed onto people's skin and even written in
the sky, they will surely blanket the online world in ways we can not
even imagine. But let's not confuse plain old advertising and gimmick
marketing with a new form of commercial digital communication that
ostensibly gives consumers more control.

The only thing they really control is whether they reach into their wallet.

CM people have a long way to go before convincing people like Elinor that there's anything new here. In the meantime, I would caution people from using the words "marketing" and "conversation" so loosely. Not all social media that connects meaningfully with customers is "marketing," and not all of it is "conversational." This coming from a partner of "The Conversation Group" ....